It's the holiday season and I get extremely restless when I am not creating images for a long period of time. This season I was out of commission as generally I have a full house with family visiting for the holidays. About a year or two ago I decided to start taking portraits of my family members as the end results are two-fold: 1) I get to create images, which is what I love to do; and 2) It gives them a beautiful portrait for the holiday season. Win, win!

Now, getting to the subject of the title "New Year's Eve (N.Y.E) Portrait Session With Nicole". After Christmas my wife reluctantly agreed to do a one-on-one portrait session with me, which was incredibly generous of her because she absolutely dislikes being in front of the camera; the same is true of my daughter "the struggles of a photographer :-)."

My goal for this session was to capture something elegant, fashionable, and timeless. From a posing perspective I wanted something simple and not too contrived. In order to gain and hold a moment of Nicole's attention -- her attention-span is almost non-existent -- she insisted on having a companion, her companion of choice, a couple glasses of wine, which I decided to use as a "prop" in the final image.

From a lighting perspective I decided not to go with natural light, I used three strobes to give the feeling of natural light in the first two images. The last dramatic dark-moody image, I used one strobe with a reflector to give the appearance that the light source was the lamp. Although I did use strobes I wanted to balance the strobes with the ambient light throughout the entire session.

Lastly, I captured the entire quirky photo session with the admittedly eccentric Nicole on video, she often forgot we were recording, as is evidenced by the final-cut. To view the fun video, please press play and enjoy!

Again, Happy Holidays and have a Happy New Year!

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